


The coupon

by heme



Series: Chemistry student Deidara [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25405786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heme/pseuds/heme
Summary: Itachi shared some of his massage coupons with Deidara after an exam.
Relationships: Deidara/Sasori (Naruto)
Series: Chemistry student Deidara [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813744
Kudos: 9





	The coupon

**Author's Note:**

> What is even this.
> 
> I'm getting Kankurou quite OOC over here. Currently in this series, he's the embodiment of what I absolutely loathe in collaboration projects, even though I hold no dislike towards the character.

The artist leaned against a cypress, skilled fingers creating line and planes out of a lump of clay. Lifeless, the abstract bird was, weight distributed unbalanced.

 _Ruach_ could be inserted for animation, and taken away in an explosion. Attached and merged itself to the sinews of clay, the artist took off from the mountaintops, passing darkened glooms caused by stretched – out shadows of orange dusk. In the distance, broken calls of a raven echoed throughout canopies, the bird blinking on a crooked branch.

Alas, the above was only a mere melodrama played out in Deidara’s mind. When imagination was denied of its imaginary nature, it becomes a lie instead of a celebrated versatility of the human mind. In this particular case, the horizon of intersection between daybreak and sunset was muffled over by the use of figurative language cross – woven with strands of descriptions. Does it count as a lowly act of trickery?

Only the parallel was Itachi walking out from his collections exam with his trademark Uchiha silence, the “I’m so getting at least a 197/200” expression. Although Deidara did not fare exactly bad, but actually quite good on his construction of elaborate thermodynamic Hess’s law cycles corresponding to the question of stabilisation of high oxidation states by fluorine, he finds great annoyance from Itachi, and said disappointment pulled his high into a low.

The raven tapped the shorter scowling blond on the shoulder lightly, “Iwa. I have something to tell you.”

Deidara glowered with something halfway between a smirk and a frown, which resulted in something akin to constipation, “Is the Uchiha about to turn into a crybaby because he got a 195 out of 200 instead of a 198, un?”

“My heartfelt apologies that you’re mistaken, Iwa.” Itachi resisted a jab at Deidara was the one who was truly the ant in the pants crybaby, nevertheless, his emotionless face already radiated off the same intended superior message, “Shisui gave me a couple of massage coupons, and I was thinking of sharing it with someone else.”

“Great, just great, un.” Deidara sighed, then smoothed his hair, “I’m going to have a massage with a bunch of arrogant Uchihas. Fuck my life, un.”

“There is no definite connection between being an Uchiha and arrogance, Iwa. But there certainly is a positive correlation between how stylish one’s hair is and arrogance.” This highly specific remark nearly sparked Deidara flipping the international gesture of kindness – the holy middle finger towards Itachi.

“You never fail to irritate me, Uchiha, un.”

“Rest assured that the feeling is mutual, Iwa. And here are three coupons, maybe you can bring Sasori or Gari along, I don’t know.” Itachi shrugged, even though Deidara was having his own temper tantrum episode flaunted on his entire being and especially his face, the chemistry student happily took the coupons using two dainty fingers. Sasori was right on point with his description – what a brat.

It would have been a bit of a waste to spend three two – hours’ worth of massage sessions on yourself, mostly because it takes up the already crazily short periods on average per day that one could use to conduct their studies. Carbonyl chemistry was the main focus on the first year organics, albeit versatile in ways far more than one, was a massive pain to reverse – engineer the arrow – pushing mechanisms. Lone pair on non – bonding oxygen orbital donates into the C – O pi – star orbital; whenever there was a bonding orbital there was an antibonding orbital, p – character of lone pairs, et cetera, et cetera. Possibly the biggest dilemma for Deidara during this entire process was to define the significance of curly arrows, if arrows could mean anything then they do not mean anything at all.

And worse, the chemistry department holds zero seminars on ‘how to push arrows’, which resulted in lots of non – elementary but indicated as elementary steps being implied as termolecular and concerted. Along with students tearing their hair out owing to the fact that they were utterly confused, and department fellows doing exactly the same when seeing these maniacal craziness being illustrated on problem sets and worse, exam papers.

Neither side has the guts and audacity to keep the blame, and what emanated was students condemning the tutors to be overly – passive on building up chemical intuition, while at the flip end tutors in teahouses admonishing undergraduates for being far too stupid to figure it out on their own. The situation eventually escalated to the university being dubbed “University of Self – Studying” for the umpteenth time in its history. Long live open courses, long live hand – me – down problem set solutions, the students chanted like a mantra over and over.

Sasori – no – Danna would never in a lifetime go and have a massage, a complete stranger having skin contact with him was a grinding wheel on his patience, and when his patience falls to zero, there was bound to be retaliation without warning labels on. Whipping out his trusty carving knife and use them as stilettos, or maybe lace their food with some nasty poison. And get charged for first – degree murder. The other options to bring along were Gari and the Uchiha psycho Obito, with his nasty Tobi personality around Deidara senpai, even though the short – haired raven with scars even better/grotesque than Kakuzu was a year his senior. For Deidara, the choices were instantly thinned down to solely Gari.

Hence the sculptor rang his lab partner up.

“Gari, yeah?”

“What’s the matter, Dei?” Gari was quite groggy from his exam, voice hoarse, “Were you planning to check your answers with me? If that’s so, don’t. I had it already bad enough the moment I opened the exam paper.”

“No, un. The Uchiha gave me three massage coupons, and Danna’s definitely not coming.”

“How about Obito? I’m sure he would love to come.”

“If you want to see both of us being tortured by some guy screaming senpai in our ears, then I think that’s great, un.” Deidara let out a long sigh, while closing his eyes in mental pain. Obito, or Tobi, the Uchiha’s alter – ego, was a demented existence constructed specially to irritate. The only one with enough professionality and patience to put up with him was nobody other than Konan.

“I think I’ll call up Kankurou instead. Guy always appreciates small gestures of _kindnesses_.” That was Gari’s last resort, the tattooed engineering student was a bit of an uncultured redneck, however he could usually cheer a dying ember up back into a flame and thus appreciated in social settings.

Deidara snorted, “Can’t believe I actually forgot Kankurou. Even though I never met him personally, only heard about him from Danna, un.” Then a smooth voice piped up behind the blond, stunning both men absorbed in their conversation into spirals of panic, “I heard you plotting something about Kankurou, brat. Hand me your phone.”

After all the ‘carry me’ nonsense in the engineering practicals, it was no doubt Sasori wanted to retaliate his partner with all the equivalent suffering.

Sasori peered down at the name of the person whom Deidara was on the phone with, “Gari.”

Gari mentally groaned, Deidara was barely tolerable, but puppet boy was notorious for being a stick in the mud, “Sasori?”

“Yes, I am. What were you planning to achieve by pulling Kankurou into this situation?”

“We have one spare massage coupon from the three that Itachi gave Deidara, and we were thinking of giving it to him, since obviously you weren’t coming. I mean, we don’t want a knife in someone’s forehead or something.”

The redhead was very unamused at Gari’s latter statement, and he protested, “What type of a person do you take me for? That method isn’t clean, a poisoned hypodermic needle fired out from a launcher is far better.” Ignoring the weird stares from pedestrian passerbys. This place has been a touristy university town ever since the institution gained massive fame, and visitors were brainwashed by bored tour guides claiming “because of the adherence to traditionalism, all enrolled students were educated in Koine Greek and Ecclesiastical Latin.” To see the vulgarity of homicide brandished as some everyday event out of Sasori, the student who was supposed to be fluent in Greek and Latin (Itachi and most unexpectedly, Hidan, were indeed quite knowledgeable in the two languages) despite studying engineering, to say the least, surrounding tourists were shocked.

“So Kankurou it is,” Gari interrupted, “No objections?”

“No. He will pay for what he has done.” Before Gari could decipher the cryptic message hidden behind the words, Sasori hung the call up and tossed Deidara’s phone back at a random direction supposed to reach the chemistry student, the device nearly crashing down to the paved road with Deidara rushing in on frantic sprints to catch it. Unbeknownst to the participants, Sasori had prior experience with the service provider, and it was a negative memorable encounter.

Great thing he has a long – sleeved shirt on for pretty much the entire year, which conveniently covered every single one of the joint – cracking bruises on his torso. The engineering student was already getting a hollow laugh out of Kankurou’s future suffering that was awaiting, and he could use a few hours’ worth of a break out from the onslaught of Kankurou’s spam calling. The guy actually repetitively changed his phone number after getting each previous one blocked by Sasori.

Suddenly the brat was actually not that bad after all.

On second thought, no. The brat’s still a brat either way. But he was a cute brat, however making this opinion explicit to Deidara was equivalent in terms of admitting that art was something transient, or donating all his beautiful puppets to charity.

And the brat’s smug statement reached Sasori, “Well, well, Danna, so impatient to see me, un? I mean, it’s just the collections, no biggie. I’m not dead or something. Did you really miss me that much?” After all, the chemistry student was the crossover mixture of an _eigengeiler_ and Sei – _Shounagon_ when it comes to aesthetics, despite he does not possess the uncanny ability of constructing half – rhymed lewd poems of two lines and thirty - one syllables.

Sasori snapped back, “Nothing that concerns you, brat. I heard you talking with Gari on something about Kankurou, that was all.”

“Kankurou?” Deidara grinned, “I never knew you were so interested and concerned with Kankurou. For someone who loves eternity, your romantic interests sure are transient, un.” The redhead turned pale, and flushed the same colour as his hair at Deidara’s reply. To think of being married to the useless guy was nothing less than repulsive, and the brat actually did have the courage to even suggest it.

“Brat,” Sasori whipped out his textbook as a sign of warning before a venomous scorpion stings, nevertheless stumbling a bit from the additional weight, which elicited several low chuckles from Deidara, “I’m going easy on you because you count as barely tolerable. Next time I hear the same nonsense of putting me with Kankurou coming from your good – for – nothing mouth, I guarantee, you can see yourself in the university hospital unconscious.”

Deidara cocked a brow, it seems like Sasori was having one of his famous bad days, most likely due to the same Kankurou, even though the sculptor highly doubt the all bark no bite petite redhead could deal enough physical damage to get a concussion out of his junior, “Having a bad day, Danna, un? Did Kankurou burn the circuit board or something?”

The scorpion nearly collapsed from exhaustion, and dumped his belongings on the sidewalk while rubbing his temples, “You won’t believe what happened, brat. I was trying to teach Kankurou soldering components, and I have no idea about how did he managed to ruin a simple soldering job, so the circuit board caught on fire the minute I turned my back towards him to get some real work done.” Deidara was about to fell down with laughter, but got discouraged by Sasori’s massive death stare, “And I had to dump a bucket of sand onto the mess before the fire alarm rang. Main point is, brat, we’ll need to start all over again with _me_ doing all the soldering because _he_ was an imbecile.”

Deidara’s mischievous glint in his eyes signals nothing good, “Hmm, Danna, so is Kankurou still alive by now, un?”

“I swear, brat, if you remind me of him again, it will be you who’s doing my problem sets.”

“Okay, okay, Danna!” The blond raised both his hands with a lopsided smirk, “I don’t know, but you won’t be satisfied about the quality of the solutions if I’m the one doing it, un. And I’ll have to do it all over again after getting poisoned with some nasty shit, which takes a lot of time, and all of us knows how impatient you are.”

“Well, brat, since you know so well how impatient I am, stop wasting my time with your chit – chat and leave me alone to fix the circuit board.” And stormed off back to the engineering department building, nibbling a fresh sandwich from one of the nearby joints on the way.

When Sasori returned to the lab, Kankurou was not there. The male with a temper as short as his height [1] waited for five minutes (the equivalent of fifty minutes for an average person), and there were still no traces of his partner on the scene.

Seems like he bunked off from the scheduled period. So much as he came, Sasori would get one hell of a pissed; the other option was to disappear, and Sasori would still react in the identical fashion. Hard choice between either indeed. A coin – flip decided for Kankurou that he would leave the job to Sasori, and wander around in the university town centre searching for entertainment. A convenient phone call to Kankurou from Gari offered him the choice to come for a massage.

Although Sasori never appreciated Kankurou’s presence, but going for a massage while your partner was working himself off on a previously ruined – by – you group practical was simply too much, supposing even argued from any possible direction. It was truly fortunate that Sasori had not known this, he would have been torn between both ends of his male – PMS: the joy and exhilaration of being free from Kankurou because he was on a skeletal system – wrecking trip or the unadulterated anger stemming from the total lack of effort and participation of his counterpart.

And risk burning the circuit board for the second time while in the hypothetical situation of doing mental splits.

It could be summarised as the lack of Kankurou was quite beneficial to Sasori’s work ethics, with a far more efficient rate of suggesting improvements to designs. Drawing out electronic diagrams on AutoCAD, then double – checking details on MATLAB simulations. Even his codes were far better than ones produced underneath Kankurou’s disgusting influence.

Until disaster struck the puppeteer on his rear end with a good old spanking.

The trio of Deidara, Gari, and Kankurou were finally released from the one – hour long living hell, which intensified Deidara’s hatred towards Itachi. Were Uchihas secretly masochists, although not reaching Hidan’s degree judging from his love of self – harm, or were they plotting to eliminate inconvenient opponents under some harmless façade? Deidara chose the hindmost hypothesis as the most possible conclusion, biased and blinded by his one – sided rivalry to Itachi.

As if under the influence of a demonic possession, the masseurs were specially targeting one’s joints and nerves, pressing and grinding on the points with inhuman strength. Once the blond survived the torture session, he had to make a quick dash to the bathroom in order to remove traces of ran eyeliner from tears of pain. Not even Kankurou’s hilarious yelps of agony, duly videotaped by Gari could act as an amend. The chemistry lab partner duo bid Kankurou goodbye, leaving the man with cat – ears on his own way to buy a casket of beer, filled with twenty and four 500 mL bottles of the piss – tasted absurdity named Heineken.

Wanting to share the bundle of joy obtained from the suffering Kankurou with someone else, Gari was kind enough to send Deidara the unedited raw footage. The two guffawed in laughter until the sculptor recalled that Sasori – no – Danna would enjoy seeing Kankurou being tormented.

Sasori was putting the final touches of simulations while thinking of perhaps doing vibrational analysis on his puppet components when a call from Deidara inbounded. He narrowed his eyes at his ringing phone, and was wavering between to ignore the call or to pick it up.

Before Deidara could deliver his salutations of “Sasori – no – Danna”, the senior growled, “What would be something so important to interrupt me in the middle of my work, brat?”

“Danna, if I’m interrupting you so much, why would you not even ignore the call in the first place, un? Even if you won’t admit it, you still care about –” Sasori ended the call in his typical passive aggressiveness.

A few seconds later, there was yet another incoming call from the brat.

“What, brat?”

“You know, Danna, the fact that my number isn’t blocked by you proves that you do love me, un.”

“Get to the point, brat. Enough with this lovey – dovey rubbish.”

“Check your inbox, Danna. I sent you some videos just now, un. Bye!”

There was a man lying face down on a bed, letting out howls of pain in accordance to intense pressure barging into nerves and joints. The setting was frighteningly recognisable – it was the exact same place where Sasori was mutilated in his freshman year.

Pieces of the puzzle were sliding together.

Kankurou played hooky on their scheduled practical session because he was off to a boys’ – day – out massage with the brat and Gari.

In the end, unlike their previous attempt, no circuit boards were burnt. Only an unconscious Kankurou with all his stocked beers spilled on his dormitory floor, glass bottles smashed to a crisp by an enraged redhead holding a sledgehammer.

* * *

Footnotes

[1]: As someone who is actually 10 cms more vertically challenged than our beloved Sasori, I’m offended at my own remark.


End file.
